Consider yourself warned: Jesus has very little to do with this tale of two strangers in a strange land. Nobel laureate and Booker Prize winner Coetzee (“Disgrace,” “Waiting for the Barbarians”) delivers a new kind of testament in this dystopian novel about boy — separated from his mother — who washes up on the shore of a fictional foreign country where both food and personal freedom are scarce. Remembering nothing and renamed David, the boy is looked after by a man also renamed, Simon, who is intent on reuniting David with his mother.

What Are the Chances

by Kenny Rogers with Mike Blakely (Forge)

Last year, Grammy winner Kenny Rogers released a best-selling memoir. Later this year, he’ll be inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. Now we have his first novel, introducing singer Ronnie Breed, whose chart-topping rock band has just broken up. Returning home to Texas to prepare for his next act — as a Nashville star — Ronnie’s cousin enlists him as a celeb host for a Texas Hold ’Em tourney. Then things get funky, with an illegal international betting ring, the FBI and CIA, a TV pilot — and romance. Plenty of bumps in the road for a good country song.

Daughter of Empire: My Life As a Mountbatten

by Lady Pamela Hicks (Simon & Schuster)

She was at Elizabeth II’s side when she became queen of England, and she also counted Churchill and Gandhi among her inner circle. In her memoir, Lady Pamela Hicks — Pammy to pals — tells of her glamorous life as the daughter of Lord Louis Mountbatten, the last viceroy of India. Born in the Roaring ’20s, Lady Pamela, now 84, led an unconventional life in which both of her parents lived openly with their lovers (and she had a pet lion at the family’s country estate).

Lineup

by Liad Shoham (Harper)

Lawyer/writer Shoham, dubbed the Israeli John Grisham, delivers a first-rate crime thriller in this first of his works to be translated to English. After a young woman is raped, the police are relieved when her father brings in a suspect, Ziv Nevo. He was near the woman’s apartment but won’t say why, so he admits to the crime, then recants. He’s no choir boy, though — he works for the mob. When the case is tossed on a technicality, Detective Eli Nahum is fired. And he is determined to get to the bottom of things — catching a rapist, clearing his name and hitting the Mafia.

Old Man River: The Mississippi River In North American History

by Paul Schneider (Henry Holt)

Historian and writer Schneider (“Bonnie and Clyde,” “The Adirondacks”) didn’t just stick his head in books and maps and hang out in libraries for this all-encompassing bio on the mighty Mississippi. He got wet and muddy while canoeing, kayaking and boating along the river. Schneider spans the years from the time of the greatest pre-Columbian city on the continent, on the riverbank — Ca